1. Hello to the northern Germanic port, folks! I hope you’re enjoying this hot summer with some cold beers in your hands. :) Where are OPHIS situated just right now? Are you on vacations or still in work/schools? Will you play at some summer festivals – as a group or as listeners?

Hi there, thanks for contacting us. Yeah, I drank some cold beers yesterday. This summer is indeed incredibly hot, and I must admit that I am no friend of such a heat. I prefer autumn a lot. Our drummer is currently on vacation, that lousy punk. Olly and Jan will do the same in a few weeks. I am the only one who can not go anywhere, thanks to my studies. We all will visit some festivals, but we won’t play any summer open airs this year. We’ll play on an indoor festival in november though.

2. The last “ship” you’ve released from Hamburg is called “Withered Shades”. I heard in Czech Republic many positive responses regarding it. Great piece of art, definitely. But how about your personal satisfaction with the album? Are you still mostly satisfied with the songs, structure etc. or will you change something now, with some distance after the recording?

Thanks a lot, it’s great to hear that the album seems to be liked in Czech Republic. We are for sure satisfied with the album. If we could, we’d change some bits with the mastering of the record. Already during the process we knew it was not the optimum, but we were already past due with sending the mastertapes to the label, and we had used up our budget, so we couldn’t have the album mastered yet again. The overall sound is still great, because mix and production are exactly what we wanted, so we are nevertheless very satisfied. The mastering is the only thing I’d change now. And one guitar-part, which I didn’t play as smooth as I could have. Otherwise, we are fully satisfied with the album.

3. Even this is the first interview with OPHIS for Mortem zine, I don’t wanna ask you about biography, I personally hate this question, sorry. So let’s talk about the newest release immediately. Could you please tell our readers how much time the recording and composing took? And how about the composing process, is there any special way you’re creating the music?

Thanks for neglecting this biography question, I don’t like it very much either. The recording of the album took nine days. We were pretty well prepared before going to the studio, so we didn’t need more time, which is good, because the budget didn’t allow more. Also, this short time helped to achieve a raw, organic and “live” production. The mixing took much longer, because Jens Ballaschke, who recorded the album had a tough and difficult schedule. But it went by pretty smoothly. Only with the mastering there was some trouble as I said earlier. The album had to be remastered 3 times. The writing took about 2,5 years. We started writing for the album as soon as “Stream Of Misery” came out, and needed until we had booked the studio date. When we write music, it usually takes several steps and a long time until a song is finished. Mostly, I write some basic ideas at home and then meet with Jan and Olly in the rehearsal-room, where we keep working on these fragments, adding riffs and countermelodies and all this stuff. This is followed by a rough basic arrangement. Then Nils comes in and works on his drumlines, and we test and alter the arrangements, sometimes even adding new parts and riffs. In between, we put the songs to rest several times, not working on them for weeks, so we have a better critical perspective on them. I think some bands are too quick on their work. When we play a new song or section the first time, we almost always like it. But when we hear it again weeks later, we often see that it still needs a lot of work. Most our songs sound simple and are minimalistic, but nevertheless there is VERY much work in them.

4. Maybe little bit embarrassing question, but I would like to ask you about the texts. Not all readers will have a chance to read your lyrics, so is possible to tell us the main idea behind the album? If there is some story or something similar…

This is in no way an embarrassing question! I am happy when people are taking interest in the lyrics, because I put a lot of time in them. Unfortunately, the question is difficult to answer. There is no story or main idea, every song stands for itself and deals with a different topic. They all deal with negative emotions and views on life. They are all reflections of my inner self, my thoughts and state of mind. In the past I used to write very autobiographic, about occasions in my personal life. The newer lyrics are still personal and by experience, but the topics are more varied. These days I write a lot about of society and the global world the way I see it. Some songs are almost „political“. „Earth Expired“ for example is a dystopia, heavily influenced by global warming. But I must add, that there is no correct or wrong interpretation to every song. I use lots of metaphors, and those can be interpreted in several ways. So if anyone has a different understanding of the song than me, it’s no mistake. It’s my goal to write lyrics that express myself, but people also can adapt for themselves.


5. Artwork of “Withered Shades” has interesting motive. I would say it’s something like last scream. An author of it is Dusan Belohlavek and the name is definitely Czech, is that correct? Which way the cooperation took place?

Yes, Dusan Belohlavek is Czech. He was born in Prague and moved to Germany when he was still a child. He also lived in Hamburg for quite a while, and this is where we met him. This was already years ago, when our first demo was out. He is fan of our music, and we are fans of his artworks, so we became good friends over the years. He also did the cover for our “Nostrae Mortis Signaculum” EP back in 2004, though this was a picture he already painted before and licensed it to us. After the “Stream Of Misery” album, we wanted to go back to that artwork-style, we wanted something dirtier and “uglier”. So we contacted Dusan again and he agreed. We only told him the album title and the basic colour frame we wanted, and he did the rest. So the artwork is his interpretation of our songs. It was very interesting and thrilling for us to see, what would come out. We think it’s the best artwork we had so far.

6. Like I said few questions above, I heard mostly positive reactions regarding the album, but how about your feedbacks about you? Did you receive some negative reactions? If yes, what people criticized?

Believe it or not, there have not been any negative reactions so far on the new album. Only one fan so far came to us after a concert and said he didn’t like the new songs because they’d be too slow. Apart from that, we had only very positive reactions. It makes us proud.

7. Your musical direction is evident; upstanding doom metal in combination with death metal, exactly how groups played in 90’s. There are some groups that are associated as an inspiration with OPHIS, for example My Dying Bride, Asphyx or Katatonia. What do you think about? Did you play on stage with some group that inspired you through the years?

Yes, with Evoken, Skepticism, Grave, Mourning Beloveth and some others. As far as those bands go that you mentioned, they sure had a heavy influence on us, especially in the early days. You can still hear these influences in our newer material, but I think we evolved from that a lot. My Dying Bride were one of the bands that introduced me to Doom Metal and I still love them, but these days they are not an important influence anymore. There may be a basical influence left, but I don’t learn from them anymore. Same with Asphyx and Katatonia. They will always have an influence on us, because they helped to forge some basics in our sound, but these days, our influences are much wider than back when we started, but our learning process has shifted to more varied influences.

8. “Withered Shades” has been released through Solitude Production. The label has under the wings many interesting groups. In the same day like your album has been released pretty new album of THE HOWLING VOID. Did you hear the album yet? From my view…it’s amazing!

I haven’t heard the entire album yet, only the song on MySpace. I liked it very much, I think it’s a good album, because the first one was also very great, and this one has an even better production. If I am not mistaken, our drummer is in contact with Ryan from THE HOWLING VOID, he seems to be a nice bloke. I will try to get a copy from him. When it comes to Funeral Doom bands on Solitude Productions, I must say that EA are the best, though.

9. Why did you leave Imperium productions?

Because we had a limited distribution and promotion there, and we wanted to try to find something with somer broader working channels. Don’t get me wrong: Imperium Productions is a cool label that treated us perfectly and really believed in us! They offered us to release the second album too, and we would have said yes, but we wanted at least to try our luck with some more specialised labels. It took a lot of time for Imperium to release “Stream Of Misery”, and there was not much promo outside of Germany. Solitude has a bigger network to help their bands. It’s not about selling and making money, but it’s a better feeling for us, if fans are able to buy the album in their country. This is easier now. We had some offers from other labels, too.

10. Beside OPHIS exists group called Rain of Ashes, where play(ed) Philipp and Fred Winkler. Rain of Ashes did not release any full-length album, why?

Let me put straight first, that Rain Of Ashes does not exist any more. I left the band about five years ago, and they split up some months later. Fred left even earlier. Rain Of Ashes never recorded an album, because we had no record deal and did not want to produce a professional full-length ourselves. I am no friend of self production, because it is very difficult to get any distribution that way, unless you put everything for free on the internet. But this also means that you can never recoup your costs. We did not want to do that, so we only cut demos with low budgets. Also, this was all before facebook, myspace and all that shit. This band was way too chaotic and too naive (both musically and personal) to get a record deal.


11. You played in Czech Republic in 2008, together with Pantheist and Skepticism. Do you remember on that tour and gig? I wasn’t there, but my colleagues yes and found your show interesting… Do you have any special memory from your live performances?

Of course I remember that awesome tour, it was a blast. And for sure I’ll never forget that show in Prague, it was among the best gigs on the tour. The stage sound was excellent, also the crowd, the venue and the food. I also remember that the toilet was constantly occupied, so I had to shit in the forest next to the club, minutes before the show, while it was raining. We even recorded the entire show on video, but we will not release it because we played with two session musicians on that tour (we had no bass-player at that time, and Jan couldn’t play the tour because of severe family issues). The whole tour was very great, we were treated very kindly by the headliners, had good turnouts and met a whole lot of great people. There is a tour diary in the blog-archive on our Myspace, if you are interested, check it out. As far as other concerts go, we have a lot of great memories too, for example our release-gig for the „Stream Of Misery“ album, where the crowd went totally nuts. I had never seen this on a Doom concert before.

12. I don’t know many doom metal groups from Germany, for example in similar style like OPHIS. Is there any special tip from you?

There are a lot of Doom bands in Germany these days, but most of them rather play this traditional Doom Metal in the vein of Candlemass and Black Sabbath and stuff. Also, there are a lot of Stoner bands. When it comes to Death Doom as we play it, there is not much left besides OPHIS. Some bands I can recommend are 0.68, HIAM, MOUNTAIN WITCH and COLD EMBRACE, though I must say that all these bands have a different approach than OPHIS. 0.68 will release a full length album soon, and I already heard bits and pieces of it. BLACK SHAPE OF NEXUS, VERSUS THE STILLBORN MINDED and DUST also play very good extreme Doom. Non-doom bands from Germany I can recommend are DEVASTATOR, MODER, MORTAL POSSESSION and FÄULNIS.

13. Thanks a lot for the interview and of course for a great album! I hope you’ll play in Czech Republic again and looking forward to see you one day.

Yes, we’d like to play in Czech Republic again some time. Eastern Europe is great anyway. I thank you for the interview and your support. Cheers to all readers.